Programs

29 Pieces Scupltures

In 2005, artist Karen Blessen began to practice passage meditation, a form of meditation that incorporates sacred texts from major faith traditions. As she slowly and silently repeated memorized passages, Blessen felt certain phrases explode with meaning. She began to devote time each morning to contemplating the passages and writing about them. The words evolved into images, revealing themselves on paper and eventually emerging in three-dimensional form as models for large-scale works.

The 29 pieces of sculpture are as large as 60 feet tall and will bring to life the inspired messages and sacred words from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Native American and Muslim sacred passages from throughout history.

View our 29 Pieces Gallery below

29 Pieces Sculptures

1. If the very world should stop

Right handed meditation: How have I lived my life? Have I given love whenever I could? Have I wasted time in resentment? Have I caused suffering? Or have I spread joy? Have I been kind enough? Did I love freely? Did I align myself with what is good and beautiful? Or did I waste my life in worrying about the future and replaying the past? Did I contribute? Did I participate? Did I attune to an abiding sense of joy? Could I say “Hello” and “Thank you”? Or: Did I anaesthitize my senses? Was I selfish and self involved? Did I forget about the current of love available to me? Did ego keep me from loving freely?

Left handed meditation: It wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Every particle in me and those I love would “poof” into flits of light and energy. Our matter falls away to dust. Gliding in a free flight of light doesn’t sound so bad. But will those particles ever again assemble as me + my husband, as love, as a hummingbird, or the shared happy smiles when I see a friend? Then eternal awareness. Never again now.

2. Sharp like a razor’s edge is the path, difficult to traverse. Cutting through the veil.

Right handed meditation: Oh, isn’t it easy to fall into anger, to fall into resentment, and then the further fall to suffering, self recrimination, self hatred. And this path — that’s on the top of the razor’s edge — what’s the final destination? You can fall from fatigue. Sometimes even the respite of a leaky shack beckons more than that sharp edge. Where does that path go? Deliverance, supreme knowledge, the way of love leading to absolution [disolution?] in the One Big Light? How do we toughen the bottom of our feet so the razor can’t slice us in half? Over here — temptations, easy gossip, giving in to compulsions, easy little cruelties. Does it really have to be this hard?

Left handed meditation: We are the path - you are the path. The path itself is not the top of a razor’s edge, silly. You are [can be] the path. Incisive in actions. Taking steps, cutting through what’s trivial, meaningless, untrue. When you are sharp, your senses wax clear + strong. When you are sharp, you are awake. Awake to it all, with a clear eye on who you’re delivering yourself to. Be sharp like a razor’s edge in your choices, cutting through the veil to the next stage. Lead those behind you into clarity + knowledge.

Right handed meditation again: Cutting through all the muddy distractions can be so easy. You’ve still got mud on this side + that, plus you may even be standing in it. You can cut through it to get to a place that’s cool, clean, quiet, safe, at peace.

Left handed meditation again: Where does the path lead? The path leads to God, to love, to light, to what is truly precious.

3. Sharp like a razor’s edge is the path . . . difficult to traverse.The way to love.

Right handed meditation: Oh, isn’t it easy to fall into anger, to fall into resentment, and then the further fall to suffering, self recrimination, self hatred. And this path — that’s on the top of the razor’s edge — what’s the final destination? You can fall from fatigue. Sometimes even the respite of a leaky shack beckons more than that sharp edge. Where does that path go? Deliverance, supreme knowledge, the way of love leading to absolution [dissolution?] in the One Big Light? How do we toughen the bottom of our feet so the razor can’t slice us in half? Over here — temptations, easy gossip, giving in to compulsions, easy little cruelties. Does it really have to be this hard?

Left handed meditation: We are the path - you are the path. The path itself is not the top of a razor’s edge, silly. You are [can be] the path. Incisive in actions. Taking steps, cutting through what’s trivial, meaningless, untrue. When you are sharp, your senses wax clear + strong. When you are sharp, you are awake. Awake to it all, with a clear eye on who you’re delivering yourself to. Be sharp like a razor’s edge in your choices, cutting through the veil to the next stage. Lead those behind you into clarity + knowledge.

Right handed meditation again: Cutting through all the muddy distractions can be so easy. You’ve still got mud on this side + that, plus you may even be standing in it. You can cut through it to get to a place that’s cool, clean, quiet, safe, at peace.

Left handed meditation again: Where does the path lead? The path leads to God, to love, to light, to what is truly precious.

Left handed meditation: The solitude in our hearts leaves us rushing to union. To experience solitude — What then? Solitude can paralyze you into isolation, send your spirit on a search for companionship, grow fears — or send you to union. [Lovers must have solitude.] To explore. How deep is the love?

Left handed meditation: The solitude in our hearts leaves us rushing to union. To experience solitude — What then? Solitude can paralyze you into isolation, send your spirit on a search for companionship, grow fears — or send you to union. [Lovers must have solitude.] To explore. How deep is the love?

Left handed meditation: I see their eyes. Through their eyes is a depth of love, playfulness, energy, challenge, an abiding + unchanging ocean of love. I am in a vortex of love. They are a vortex of love, a current, a curtain, a light curtain illuminating our world. Sister souls. Friends.

Right handed meditation: How can things be SO dark? Greed, apathy, every day the headlines. Children killed, women raped, people starving, dying of AIDS, child soldiers, hurricanes, earthquakes, cruise ships sinking. Does this darkness have any light? Does a cold wind make an impenetrable curtain that the most fierce light cannot penetrate? Is there anyplace a den of darkness where ALL hope, all light is extinguished? The darkness may not be too dark for God, but is it too dark for me?

Left handed meditation: Left handed meditation: The dark is powerless before the sun. Light Inextinguishable. Sometimes human hands have to clear the thicket, banish the cruelty. Lock up what is so full of fearful savagery. Bathe it in light + holy water, love it pamper it, hold steady + fearless when it hisses. Can we adopt this fearlessness? With the blackened sheets? Deadened hope?

9. Cleave the heart of a raindrop, a hundred pure oceans will pour forth.

Right handed meditation: The image of a raindrop, suspended in mid-air, appears before me. It is large, undulating like a big bubble, but it’s filled with water not air. It’s levitating before my eyes, almost as big as my head. It’s there — in my face — as though to say — here — really look at me. I look into the transparent, undulating crystal teardrop, and there’s the Ganges, pouring into the Indian Ocean, after it has wound its way through India, the essence of millions of pilgrims, blended in one constant current. There are my mother’s tears, rinsed from her handkerchief into the network of small town sewer pipes that flow into the river. There are the Platte and the Loup, finding their way to the Missouri, to the Gulf of Mexico, carrying the laughter, the urine, and the touch of my friends and me. There is the Hudson, ripe with dust from cruise boats, the blades of ice skates, the spit of overturned kayakers - drifting to the Atlantic. Water. Oceanic currents, mixing, mixing, mixing. Till there’s one planetary soup – Earth Soup. The water lifts itself to the light and leaves. Mysterious. The earth turns, raindrops fall, and my friends and me are baptized in the holy water of the Ganges as we walk through the supermarket parking lot. A baba chanting in India detects fleeting spasms of a faraway mother’s sorrow and the whiff of a young Nebraska girl’s fantasy.

Left handed meditation: A knife through the heart. The waters defiled by bodies in the Volga and urine in the Platte have visited the edifying light of the sun, (have visited God) and fall on us, like a heavenly, holy sprinkling of pure baptismal water.

Right handed meditation: Who is that calling? Is it God’s voice, instructing me to set aside the stack of newspapers, to turn off the “breaking news” that penetrates our hope for peace, to turn the heat off the boiling kettle of bitter resentments and anger and instead to pick up a different map, to a different destination, find a way there, pick out the perfect travel companions, check out the luggage limits, and embark. Or: Is the call subversive? Encouraging ignorance, wrong minded acceptance, or delusion? Is it a diversionary imagining? The only affordable means to escape or transcend the ties that bind us? The captors who keep us locked up?

Left handed meditation: The ecstasy will really make you feel quite silly. There you are trailing streamers of pure color as you whirl, for the life of you, puzzled at having wasted one moment worrying, when your soul is bursting to dance. You just have to laugh. Gulping in vapors of pure light, churning + turning, till this little light show is “pffft”, invisible, like 70 million tiny, tiny tiny ‘not visible to the human eye’ Tinkerbelles.

Left handed meditation: She sits behind me, her right eye poised for a wink, including me in the secret. I love you deeply, and before that, she loved me, she was loved by the one before her. Back, back, back, back, back. Back and back to the beginning. Back to the garden. To the origin of love. “In the pupil of an eye, an endless heaven.” The eye – my eye – will come to an end. The veil will descend, the glassy orb will disintegrate to dust. But now, while energy + light still animate my cells, it’s a supremely calibrated heaven detector, fixing its gaze on the infinite aspects of heaven once passed by so swiftly. Clarify your calibrations. Find the best mechanic. You have to learn to recognize heaven.

Right handed meditation: Not in the fingertips, or the undersole of a foot, or the depth of the navel, or the nipple of a breast. It’s in the pupil of an eye, receiver of infinite, unchanging light. Fill yourself with light and you are filled with heaven. So that when someone gazes into your eyes, they’ll be bathed in the warm glow of eternity. This pupil filled with golden lights – it’s a mysterious mirror trick, a kaleidoscope, reflecting through any walls, unstopped by barriers or prisons, beaming all the way through, to the sun.

Right handed meditation: Right handed meditation: Be clean. [Create in me a clean heart O God.] Be quiet. [Listen. Tune in. Close yourself to distraction.] Be cool. [Let nothing upset you.] Clean, quiet, and cool . . . sounds like a good place to take residence.

Left handed meditation:Left handed meditation: Clean, quiet, and cool may sound like an ad in the apartment listings – the edited tease to get you to rise and take a look. You do. It works. You need a new place. You take residence in clean, quiet, and cool, or it in you and you hear the word “oasis” three days in a row. This oasis is not a mirage. What a relief to have just the windowsills to dust. Here, let me get you a cool drink of water, and let’s talk.

Right handed meditation: Like a child hiding behind a mother’s legs – I hide, too, giving my questions and my prayers over to you. They’re complicated, unresolvable, it seems. Surely, in your wisdom, you will arrive at the most judicious solution. If I hide in the beauty of your residence, will someone think better of me? Will your confidence, wisdom, and riches reflect on me? I want to give way to your wise observations, to your easy kindness, so that no one can see the petty tempests stirring in me. You have the big picture. You’ve seen it all. I’m still shocked, frightened, and helpless in the face of a permeating selfishness + cruelty. You’re not afraid to slap it down, pull up its roots, and throw it in the fire. You’re not weighed down by the thousand little things that siphon life away. You know. You know. You know how to deal.

Left handed meditation: If you and I melt together, aren’t we the embodiment of the most holy communion. You + me. Me in you. Who can tell who is who anymore? You’ll be my face to the world. But sometimes it’ll be my voice coming from your lips. I’ll be sending you little notes, prompting your words. My thoughts + belief in you will give you courage.

Right handed meditation: Like a child hiding behind a mother’s legs – I hide, too, giving my questions and my prayers over to you. They’re complicated, unresolvable, it seems. Surely, in your wisdom, you will arrive at the most judicious solution. If I hide in the beauty of your residence, will someone think better of me? Will your confidence, wisdom, and riches reflect on me? I want to give way to your wise observations, to your easy kindness, so that no one can see the petty tempests stirring in me. You have the big picture. You’ve seen it all. I’m still shocked, frightened, and helpless in the face of a permeating selfishness + cruelty. You’re not afraid to slap it down, pull up its roots, and throw it in the fire. You’re not weighed down by the thousand little things that siphon life away. You know. You know. You know how to deal.

Left handed meditation: If you and I melt together, aren’t we the embodiment of the most holy communion. You + me. Me in you. Who can tell who is who anymore? You’ll be my face to the world. But sometimes it’ll be my voice coming from your lips. I’ll be sending you little notes, prompting your words. My thoughts + belief in you will give you courage.

Right handed meditation: Let’s ditch the concept of the haunted house. It’s redundant, right? It’s enough that we already lug around the overflowing records and unruly spirits of past betrayals, the scars of every slap and slice, not to mention the anticipated fear of what lies around the corner or in our mind before we open our eyes in the morning. Let’s burn that house down, once and for all and make a new model mobile home. We’ll name it “JOY” and call in the best designers. For once a sales pitch is true. This “JOY” will change your life. Hand over everything before you cross the threshold and see the glowing yellow walls of “Joy”.

You are loved. You are love.

Left handed meditation: Joy can feel like the absolute wrong emotion or reaction to what surrounds us today. Do we need to list the bent behavior? Every day. Every damned day. [Every blessed day.] Just today in the paper — a 42 year old priest in Mexico arrested for strangling his teenage, pregnant lover (or was she raped?). That not enough, he cut off her head with a kitchen knife, chopped up the rest of her body + disposed of all the parts in plastic bags. What else? A woman thrown in jail for 40 years for vehicular homicide now says she was date raped on the night of her accident. Free range chickens pose a danger of avian flu. It was a light news day. Every morning it arrives, it's daily message “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” So there’s the picture. Do you get it? Do you see how desperately all of us caught in the quagmire need a hand to pull us out of this mud? Enlist now. Joy needs more recruits.

Right handed meditation: Let’s ditch the concept of the haunted house. It’s redundant, right? It’s enough that we already lug around the overflowing records and unruly spirits of past betrayals, the scars of every slap and slice, not to mention the anticipated fear of what lies around the corner or in our mind before we open our eyes in the morning. Let’s burn that house down, once and for all and make a new model mobile home. We’ll name it “JOY” and call in the best designers. For once a sales pitch is true. This “JOY” will change your life. Hand over everything before you cross the threshold and see the glowing yellow walls of “Joy”.

You are loved. You are love.

Left handed meditation: Joy can feel like the absolute wrong emotion or reaction to what surrounds us today. Do we need to list the bent behavior? Every day. Every damned day. [Every blessed day.] Just today in the paper — a 42 year old priest in Mexico arrested for strangling his teenage, pregnant lover (or was she raped?). That not enough, he cut off her head with a kitchen knife, chopped up the rest of her body + disposed of all the parts in plastic bags. What else? A woman thrown in jail for 40 years for vehicular homicide now says she was date raped on the night of her accident. Free range chickens pose a danger of avian flu. It was a light news day. Every morning it arrives, it's daily message “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” So there’s the picture. Do you get it? Do you see how desperately all of us caught in the quagmire need a hand to pull us out of this mud? Enlist now. Joy needs more recruits.

Right handed meditation: Let’s ditch the concept of the haunted house. It’s redundant, right? It’s enough that we already lug around the overflowing records and unruly spirits of past betrayals, the scars of every slap and slice, not to mention the anticipated fear of what lies around the corner or in our mind before we open our eyes in the morning. Let’s burn that house down, once and for all and make a new model mobile home. We’ll name it “JOY” and call in the best designers. For once a sales pitch is true. This “JOY” will change your life. Hand over everything before you cross the threshold and see the glowing yellow walls of “Joy”.

You are loved. You are love.

Left handed meditation: Joy can feel like the absolute wrong emotion or reaction to what surrounds us today. Do we need to list the bent behavior? Every day. Every damned day. [Every blessed day.] Just today in the paper — a 42 year old priest in Mexico arrested for strangling his teenage, pregnant lover (or was she raped?). That not enough, he cut off her head with a kitchen knife, chopped up the rest of her body + disposed of all the parts in plastic bags. What else? A woman thrown in jail for 40 years for vehicular homicide now says she was date raped on the night of her accident. Free range chickens pose a danger of avian flu. It was a light news day. Every morning it arrives, it's daily message “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” So there’s the picture. Do you get it? Do you see how desperately all of us caught in the quagmire need a hand to pull us out of this mud? Enlist now. Joy needs more recruits.

20. I see no imprint of my sins. In a moment, love has burned everything.

Right handed meditation: She’s a 24 year old saint. She’s talking about divine love of course. Agape. Divine, unconditional love. Unending, undying love that never changes. But take these words out of context and imagine them spoken by a sinner, not a saint. What about phenomenal love? Is one madness and one divine? The spark of phenomenal love is the littlest friction, the unexpected chemistry that blows up that bomb. The hurt feelings of a husband, a wife — the children — burned. If there’s no evidence is there no sin?

Left handed meditation: If you can’t “see” the imprint of your sins does that mean they’ve left no mark? From that point on, what happens if we step “out of” love, then “in”, then “out?” Is every misstep burned when we remember to renew love? Is there any line past which there is no mercy?

21. I see no imprint of my sins. In a moment, love has burned everything.

Right handed meditation: She’s a 24 year old saint. She’s talking about divine love of course. Agape. Divine, unconditional love. Unending, undying love that never changes. But take these words out of context and imagine them spoken by a sinner, not a saint. What about phenomenal love? Is one madness and one divine? The spark of phenomenal love is the littlest friction, the unexpected chemistry that blows up that bomb. The hurt feelings of a husband, a wife — the children — burned. If there’s no evidence is there no sin?

Left handed meditation: If you can’t “see” the imprint of your sins does that mean they’ve left no mark? From that point on, what happens if we step “out of” love, then “in”, then “out?” Is every misstep burned when we remember to renew love? Is there any line past which there is no mercy?

Right handed meditation: I want to see Him, and I want to see Him in him too. What a fantasy. Beyond all sense and experience, I still hold on to the possibility of life with him being free of resistance and full of wonder, kind of like life with “Him.” I’ve created a man. He’s real. He’s tall and so good looking. He has light brown hair, brown eyes, a smile that sizzles. The story has an Act 1. Acts 2 + 3 could go any one of an infinite number of ways. It could end badly. It could end beautifully. I could lose interest.

Left handed meditation: I want to see Him and I’d like to see Him right here and right now. Because if he’s as merciful as we believe, if He really conquers evil, we’ve got to figure out a way to stop some of the stuff that’s coming down. Too many of us live to impress + not to be kind, thinking that how white our teeth are or what shoes we wear will deliver love to us. And this cruelty against women + children has gone on too long. Make it stop! Make it stop!

Right handed meditation: Awesome. See it? The wings that give flight to this heavenly creature are nourished by malaria ridden bloody bites into the flesh of a dog, the salty tears of a baby in Ethiopia, the dung of an elephant lumbering in India, and the juice of the orange in my kitchen. Such a deal — she feasts on disease, dung, tears, and leftovers — and she’s blessed with bejeweled, sparkling wings that take her closer to heaven than this grounded body of mine will ever be.

Left handed meditation: I imagine what an ocean of wonder might look like. It looks like what we see every time we open our eyes. Zoom in on the wing of a fly. Take a step into the magnificent construction, more fragile than a sand mandala made by a Tibetan monk, closer to God than the labyrinth at Chartres. I’m enchanted by a glistening latticework made for free — from trash.

Right handed meditation: There may need to be a recall. There’s growing evidence that more and more hands are itching to make a fist and pull a trigger. Or else they just don’t work at all. Far from respecting the things you have made, they destroy with a smile and a bang. There may need to be some re-wiring, a total overhaul, a biological re-direct, a recall, or an acid bath. This message is urgent as lives are being lost as we speak.

Left handed meditation: Gentle souls and saints have no issue with this prayer. Any other way is unthinkable. I try to tread lovingly + lightly. This is one instance where I’m tempted to say, “I’m not the problem. They are. It’s not my hands. It’s theirs. It’s not my fault.” If my hands and their hands are both manifested from the One Body, why do my hands lavish love and their hands slug the mother of their children, pull the trigger on their neighbor or draw up plans to level your forests? I think I hear myself saying that they should be more like me.

Right handed meditation: You made me. You made elephants, butterflies, and flowers. That part is easy. You also made the rapists who’ve hurt my friends. You made our trigger happy leaders in this country where you shed your grace. That’s harder. Do my hands respect them too? Clearly not. When the bottom line is, “Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.”, what do we do with all those who drag us so deeply in the red? Pray? Negotiate? A magic trick? Sterilize? Chant for peace?

Right handed meditation: Are we talking about the town of “me”? This walled structure of skin and bloody roads, dazzling lights and sparkling electrons? Of input and output [just like a city]? This town that sometimes gives shelter and comfort + then again locks all the gates? Well, maybe it’s the name of my town but everything is not always in a name. I mean, what is the command “Grieve not” saying? Grieving isn’t allowed here? Could it be saying that the causes of suffering and grief don’t live here? That this may be a town free of selfishness?

Left handed meditation: Are we talking about the town of “me”? This walled structure of skin and bloody roads, dazzling lights and sparkling electrons? Of input and output [just like a city]? This town that sometimes gives shelter and comfort + then again locks all the gates? Well, maybe it’s the name of my town but everything is not always in a name. I mean, what is the command “Grieve not” saying? Grieving isn’t allowed here? Could it be saying that the causes of suffering and grief don’t live here? That this may be a town free of selfishness?

Right handed meditation: The sign at the city limit says “Grieve Not.” Years ago there were “No trespassing” signs, “No guns allowed,” a whole wall of signs. “No cruelty.” “No hunting.” No this. No that. But now the signs have all been taken down + we welcome trespassers. The light curtain at our borderline disarms anyone who steps through it into our town. We don’t grieve here because, here, we’re never born and we never die. How do you want the town to look? You’ve got it. My town is little white Victorian cottages, circa 1924. Sometimes we pull the wounded over our border and into our town. Out there it’s treacherous. Some come to stay. Not everyone.

Left handed meditation: Since I’m not divine, I might be able to call my town “Grieve Not” but I doubt that I could live up to the name. A divine one sees birth or death as a change of wardrobe. The object of love is there whether in the form of a puppy, a rock star, handsome surfer boy, or a cloud of gas + light. Not so for me. Not yet. The smiles + touch of ones I love are still my reality.

26. Fireflies, lightning, SUN, or moon (Less than a firefly, aspiring to the moon)

Left handed meditation: The SUN There are the blistering, blasting encounters with light — “struck” by lightning, “burnt and baked” by the sun, the “nuked” landscape of a forest fire, the terrifying belch of molten rock from a volcano. There's the romance of moonlight. We can look into the soft edited reflection of the furnace of the sun. Then there are fireflies — the one visible airborne species that can actually light the way. There are terrifying forces of light on the one hand and then the gentle light of fireflies and the moon bewitching us with the dark.

Left handed meditation again: Which source of light most appeals to you? The seductive twinkling of fireflies on a summer night — gentle reminders that even in the dark of night there’s a natural source of light that’s too tiny for even the sharpest shot to shoot out. Maybe you have a taste for the high drama of lightning — there’s quite a lot of power on display and also the ability to make a point and stop all argument just like that. And then there’s the sun. Whew. How do we get ourselves wrapped around the concept of that? Our whole family is in deep debt to the sun + it’d really be better to praise it, pamper it + give it what it wants cuz, oh baby, we have no idea what could happen if she were to take a hostile turn on us. We’re talking you + me in a run in with the Law*. Sigh. No wonder we consider the moon with such romance. It’s a level of light we can handle without sunscreen or protective fire gear. It’s perfectly arranged and gently directed to edit the sun and to keep us from being too afraid of the dark.

Left handed meditation: Natural Sources of Light — The SUN There are the blistering, blasting encounters with light — “struck” by lightning, “burnt and baked” by the sun, the “nuked” landscape of a forest fire, the terrifying belch of molten rock from a volcano. There's the romance of moonlight. We can look into the soft edited reflection of the furnace of the sun. Then there are fireflies — the one visible airborne species that can actually light the way. There are terrifying forces of light on the one hand and then the gentle light of fireflies and the moon bewitching us with the dark.

Left handed meditation again: Which source of light most appeals to you? The seductive twinkling of fireflies on a summer night — gentle reminders that even in the dark of night there’s a natural source of light that’s too tiny for even the sharpest shot to shoot out. Maybe you have a taste for the high drama of lightning — there’s quite a lot of power on display and also the ability to make a point and stop all argument just like that. And then there’s the sun. Whew. How do we get ourselves wrapped around the concept of that? Our whole family is in deep debt to the sun + it’d really be better to praise it, pamper it + give it what it wants cuz, oh baby, we have no idea what could happen if she were to take a hostile turn on us. We’re talking you + me in a run in with the Law*. Sigh. No wonder we consider the moon with such romance. It’s a level of light we can handle without sunscreen or protective fire gear. It’s perfectly arranged and gently directed to edit the sun and to keep us from being too afraid of the dark.

Right handed meditation: Like a bride ready for the next step, remove the veil of ignorance before me. I wonder if I’ll like what I see. Will you?

Left handed meditation: This veil of ignorance that is the last thing separating me from the truth — I don’t know — maybe there’s reason to stick with veiled anonymity. Can’t I handle the truth? There’s abundant reason to believe that beyond the veil lies eternal love and light. But consider this: what if the husband on the other side of the veil is a shape shifter? Then what? Removal of ignorance is not to be taken lightly.

Right handed meditation: This veil is one in a long succession of veils — curtains that have opened the stage to marriage, friendships, art, family, tragedies and the final curtain — to the death scene. Who does our leading lady want to be at the moment she faces death? What’s the arc of her story line?

Right handed meditation: This issue of how to die came about from the consideration of Who I wanted to aspire to be and how I wanted to live. Some possibilities: Dying bitter and broken — not the ending I want. Dying of alcohol or drugs — nope. Dying a tragic artist’s death — makes a great myth but too dreadful to live it. Murder-suicide with a doomed lover. Again - great myth, but I’m queasy about violence. And the drama is too distracting. Dying while working in Africa — getting warmer. Dying while still in a full court press of “in love” with life, “in love” with art, “in love” with those I love — that’s a life worth living. So the task began. Midway at a fork in the road, it’s exhilarating to know that we can tweak our ticket.

Left handed meditation: She’s not talking about a yearned for death by a homicidal lover — not that at all. But more like being on the Love Boat, if it should happen to go down. There you are, in full love, with the object of your love at your side and in your heart. May the moment of death come when my heart is full to the gills with love.